


The Hurricane Inside

by nirvhannahcornell



Category: Metallica
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Drinking, F/M, One Shot, Semi-Public Sex, Southern Gothic, imagine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 01:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19367071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirvhannahcornell/pseuds/nirvhannahcornell
Summary: Picture this, dear reader: you are with James in the French Quarter, and there’s a storm a-brewing. There’s only one room, too.





	The Hurricane Inside

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the New Orleans scenes from Have Your Cake and Eat It. Southern Gothic is a good, good genre for them 🖤

It’s almost five o’clock in the afternoon when you are taking a walk about the French Quarter. The day is muggy and hot, and all you want is a little drink for yourself, albeit one that is quintessential of New Orleans and can keep the sweat on your forehead at bay for a while. At the same time, however, you find yourself walking at a brisk pace because of the sight of those massive thunderheads mushrooming over the Gulf of Mexico worries you a bit. You never experienced a hurricane and this one kind of sneaked up on you.  
You turn the corner into a narrow side street lined with equally narrow sidewalks and older, darker buildings along the way.  
You see him standing on the third porch up the street with a glass in his hand and streamlined black sunglasses over his face. He has a mane of long, wavy blond hair down past his shoulders, a narrow face with a prominent jaw, and sinewy arms, and he is wearing a bright blue plaid shirt without its sleeves. You approach him, licking your lips from thirst.  
“Excuse me,” you begin; he perks up at the sight of you, showing you his big bright white teeth; “is this a bar?”  
“Maybe,” he replies, his grin never fading, “have you experienced a hurricane before?”  
“I haven’t.”  
He closes his mouth and nods back to the entrance behind him.  
“Come on in,” he invites you. You follow him into the spacious bar, a room of wooden walls illuminated by the warm amber lights suspended by the dark ceiling: to the left is a series of low heavy oak tables and matching spindly chairs; to the right stands the bar, a heavy polished wooden plank lit by a handful of candles in smoked glass vessels.  
“May I ask what you’re drinking?” you ask him as the two of you take a seat there at the bar. He removes his sunglasses to show you his blue eyes, as clear and bright as a cloudless sunny sky.  
“Screaming orgasm with whiskey,” he replies, completely nonplussed. You feel your face grow warm and he lets out a steady little chuckle in response.  
The bartender walks out from behind the shadows: an older black woman with silver, black, and gold dyed dreadlocks tied up on the crown of her head and wearing a black uniform. She wears a heavy silver cross with dark emerald prayer beads around her neck and black leather gloves on her hands. She shows you a distant smile, one akin to the Mona Lisa, and you find yourself mesmerized by the combination of it and the whites of her eyes.  
“What’ll it be, hon?” she asks you in a low, velvety voice dripping with that regal Louisiana accent.  
“Er, hurricane, please.”  
“Just in time for the little storm outside, I see,” she jokes with a wag of the finger and a reach around for the bottle of rum.  
“Delphine here has lived in New Orleans long enough she can get away with jokes like that,” he points out with a slight chuckle.  
“You know each other?” you ask him.  
“We know one another well enough, hon,” she admits. In the dim warm light, you notice a silver skull ring on his left ring finger and a chain bracelet on his wrist with a plate reading “the dark knight was here” and you begin to wonder about him.  
You then watch Delphine make the hurricane in a clean cylindrical glass, pouring in the double shots of two kinds of rum first, followed by simple syrup, a splash of grenadine, and then the fruit juices: you catch a whiff of that sweet passion fruit, and the room fells so much cooler because of it.  
The sight of the citrus makes the back of your mouth tingle; she then takes a metal cup on the side to stick onto the mouth of the glass for a shake, and then she strains it into a clean bulbous glass there on the bar before her.  
A twist of lime, followed by a garnish of a pair of maraschino cherries and an orange slice. She slips in a black straw when you hear a rumble of thunder in the distance.  
“Thank you,” you tell her, taking a whiff of the drink, “and what do we do when the storm comes in?”  
“There’s a mausoleum out back,” she says, leaning on the edge of the bar, “and it’s protected my son and me from many a number of storms, ‘n if push comes to shove, I’m sure the big’un over here’ll be willin’ to piggyback you out there.”  
You turn to him as you bring the straw to your mouth.  
“Would you do that for me?”  
“I don’t see why not,” he says with a shrug and a nervous chuckle. Delphine, meanwhile, takes out a clean rag to wipe down the bar. He takes a sip of his drink, and you take a sip from yours at the same time. The hurricane is sweet and fresh, like a walk on the beach down by the bayou. And so you take another sip, and then you nibble on one of the cherries before taking another sip. It’s not until you reach halfway when you realize that is not a screaming orgasm in his hand, there are no other people in the bar, and this drink has two kinds of rum in it.  
Another rumble of thunder catches your attention; the wind begins to pick up outside as you give the hurricane before you another sip, this time more of a heartier drink, and you begin to feel the work of the rum, warming you from the inside and yet keeping you cool at the same time.  
“We should probably get out to the shelter, sugs,” she suggests, “ya’ll can pay later.”  
“Good idea,” he says, downing the rest of his drink; but you still have a fair amount of hurricane left in your glass. As Delphine puts her rag into a basket underneath the bar, the amber lights flicker and go out with the next clap of thunder overhead, thus leaving the room engulfed in darkness. He climbs to his feet, and you take the glass with you as she leads the two of you along the side of the bar towards the bathrooms. You go down a dark corridor to the back door, which Delphine reaches first.  
The daylight has given way to a menacing pitch dark sky and howling winds. He puts a hand on your shoulder as she leads you to the low stone building the shape of a house nestled in a corner of the lot. You feel a drop of rain on your forehead as the three of you hurry over to the mausoleum across the swampy green grass: you know this stretch of land will become a full on swamp soon enough.  
Delphine pushes the heavy door open and you are face to face with a small room, the walls of which are lined with a ledge just for the three of you to take a seat. On the wall opposite from the door is a slit for you to breath and watch the rain. It smells earthy and damp, as if someone or something had been buried here.  
He climbs up first and, pressing his back against the wall and his head against the ceiling, he extends his hand for you to take. Using your free hand, you hold on and he helps you up. You slither past him into the corner, still with your drink in hand. Once she slides the door closed, and you are nestled next to him in the corner, he helps her onto the ledge. You notice there is another slit in the door, one big enough to let in fresh air but not big enough to let in the rain and storm surge.  
Another clap of thunder, and with it comes the rain. The wind howls through the slits in the mausoleum. You take one more drink of your own personal hurricane before you set the glass down on the ledge underneath the slit on the wall. In the dim light, you cuddle up next to him.  
“Are you cold?” he asks you.  
“Scared,” you confess. Without hesitating, he puts his arm around you.  
“Hang on, hang on, I’ve got you,” he whispers into your ear.  
The rain pummels the roof of the mausoleum overhead, and you feel the damp cold filtering in through the slits in the walls. You shudder and shake from the cold, even though the alcohol in your system does what it can to keep the warmth in your limbs and your chest. He snuggles closer to you; for a second, you swear he kisses you on the side of the head, or perhaps it is just the hurricane on the inside and the outside talking. But then he does it again during another clap of thunder, this time on your cheek.  
“What are you doing?” you ask him over the deafening roar of the rain and wind.  
“Keeping you company,” he replies in a low voice. He kisses you once more, a gentle soft kiss on the cheek, and then he kisses you on the mouth, a deep passionate one firm to the touch. You feel his hand ride up your shirt, up your side to your right breast, and then he reaches round to your back. He unhooks your bra and, once it slacks, he caresses you, endlessly touching you and kissing you despite of Delphine being on the other side of him and a raging storm all around you.   
You let it go down, because the hurricane inside is the only other thing keeping the warmth inside of you. You feel his other hand dip down between your legs and you close your eyes. There is enough noise around you that you let out a soft pleasured moan as he undoes your shorts and slips his hand down to fondle you. You undo the button on his jeans to give him a feel; when you touch him, you feel he is quite long. You poke and stroke until you feel the skin firming up.  
In fact, it’s so loud in the mausoleum that you come twice and Delphine does not even hear you.  
The cold hard stone around you loses all of its austerity, and, even though you are sustaining some splash back from the rain through the slit next to you, the storm means nothing to you now. As long as you are with him, you feel more pleasure than a hot night in the French Quarter.


End file.
